


Gotta Have Biters

by Severina



Category: Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: Community: tamingthemuse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-01
Updated: 2012-12-01
Packaged: 2017-11-20 01:40:42
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 564
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/579901
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Severina/pseuds/Severina
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It’s the real men that do the dirty work.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Gotta Have Biters

**Author's Note:**

> Written for LJ's tamingthemuse community, for the prompt "if you can't beat them, trick them". I struggled with this prompt and with Merle's voice, but I'm releasing this into the wild anyway. :)
> 
> As always: Merle is a racist and a homophobe. His views are not mine.
> 
> * * *

Merle’s said it before and he’ll say it again: the Red Zone is bad news. Ain’t nothing but back roads and overgrown forest, that big damn prison squatting in the middle and filled to bursting with walkers. Too many of them to deal with in the prison; too many of them to deal with in the back country where the trees crowd in and sometimes you can’t see more’n two feet in front of your face. Safer, better to just stay put in Woodbury. Triple barricade the walls and keep ‘em manned round the clock. Stay out of the Red Zone altogether.

But they gotta have biters. Need the damn biters for the games that keep the masses entertained, need even more of ‘em for whatever creepyass experiments Milton runs in that little back room of his. Merle don’t trust the little nerd, never has; always looking down his nose at the men on the wall, him and his spotless shirts and his prissy little glasses and his fucking tea. Merle figures the little bookworm messing around with blood work and skin cells is gonna result in a superwalker one of these days, some goddamn monster with a bullet resistant skull or something. Merle knows one thing for sure: if he turns, the first person he’s goin’ after is that goddamn little faggot.

Gotta have biters, the Governor says, and it don’t matter to him that most people that go into the Red Zone never come out again. The Governor sits in his back garden and jerks off to _Ode To Joy_ all day for all Merle knows. Maybe him and Milton do a little circle jerk.

It’s the real men that do the dirty work.

Gotta have biters.

Good thing the damn things are so fucking stupid.

They got it rigged so the wind generator only sends out its signal twice a day, for four hours at a time. The Governor wanted it running twenty-four/seven, ‘til Merle pointed out that they’d have every goddamn walker in Georgia campin’ out in that field, stumbling around and trying to figure out where the noise is comin’ from. Even at four hours they usually got more biters than they could use, even accounting for the few that are too scrawny or missing some vital component, like a goddamn arm. Ain’t no fun fighting in a ring with an armless walker, that’s for sure.

Merle twirls his hand in the air, steps back when Matt levers the net out of the trap. He does a quick count, sniffs and grins when one of ‘em lunges within the netting, snarling and snapping its rotted teeth in his direction. Thing’s a big one too; probably worked construction or some such before the world went to hell in a goddamn hand basket. Yeah, this one will give the peasants in the cheap seats some real thrills come Saturday night.

He slides the pliers out of his back pocket effortlessly, waits until Matt and the spic have the biter pinned to the ground before he drops a knee onto the thing’s chest and leans in, grinning.

“Gonna make you look real pretty, you sumbitch,” he murmurs, patting the brain-dead wonder on the cheek before going to work. The thing keeps growling and snapping at him even when every single one of its teeth are scattered on the grass.

Stupid motherfuckers.


End file.
